Crime Watch Daily exclusive: Targets, hero in averted murder-for-hire plot discuss case
05/03/2016 1:46 pm PDT
UPDATE June 7, 2017:
From the Circleville Herald: "Tara Lambert's conviction for conspiracy to commit aggravated murder has been overturned by the Ohio 4th District Court of Appeals.
"Lambert's lawyer, Samuel Shemansk, field an appeal that claimed the original indictment was flawed because it did not specify what overt act Lambert had committed in the conspiracy."
In March 2016, Crime Watch Daily brought you the unbelievable story of Tara Lambert, a small-town beauty with a hideous alter-ego.
You saw the prosecutors. You heard from police. But there's one side of the story that's never been told until now, in a Crime Watch Daily exclusive, the people Tara Lambert put in her sights and with the woman Lambert tried to hire to get the job done.
It began in Circleville, Ohio, a quaint town where everyone knows everyone, including Tara Lambert, and the biological mother of her two stepdaughters, Kellie Cooke.
"[Our relationship] was fine, we did stuff with the kids together," said Kellie Cooke.
"She was at both my children's births," said Shawn Cooke.
"She got us a wedding gift," said Kellie.
"I talked to her about every day for the longest time," said Kellie. "I'm not going to say we were best of friends or anything, but there was friendship there."
"Sometimes she made it not hard to like her," said Shawn.
But then, apparently, if Tara Lambert didn't like you, she had people who could send a message -- people like old high school acquaintance Ginny Cheadle, speaking to Crime Watch Daily for the first time.
"I believe at one point in time she actually tried to get me to fight somebody in school for her when I was like 14, 15 years old," said Ginny. "But I wouldn't call us 'friends,' but we were 'associates.'"
Which Ginny says made it all the more surprising when more than 15 years after the two lost touch, Tara suddenly reached out with a problem she needed solved.
"'Hey girl!!! Do we know any good people that could make threatening 'prank' calls to a ----- that deserves it? Sounds stupid but if I could get several people to do it her ----- --- would think twice before she messes with me,'" read Tara's text to Ginny.
The woman Tara wanted harassed was none other than Kellie Cooke.
But why? What had changed? The Cookes say that over time, Tara created a sort of firewall between the two families, which she used to keep Kellie from her girls.
After that, a series of small courtroom battles ensued between Kellie and her ex, Tara's husband.
And that's when Tara asked Ginny to make the threatening call.
"She answered the phone, I just immediately started yelling at her. I think one point in time I even told her that I was gonna beat her up," said Ginny.
"It was just someone saying that they were calling on behalf of Tara, and that if I didn't stop running my mouth, that they were going to 'curb-stomp' me," said Kellie.
A terrifying threat that left Kellie in tears. She had no way of knowing then that if Ginny hadn't made that call, she and her husband Shawn might not be alive today.
"In a way it was kind of a blessing in disguise because it tied this whole thing together," said Kellie.
Just a few months after that incident, Tara came calling again.
"She wrote me up on Facebook and asked me if I knew of anybody who could take care of 'our problem for good,'" said Ginny.
Ginny responds: "'Um, well, I have somebody that might be able to help you out.'"
"You know how much I would love that?" replies Tara. "I'm going to like have an orgasm in my car just thinking about it."
There was just one problem with the plot. When Tara Lambert assumed Ginny Cheadle didn't care about human life, she assumed wrong.
"The whole time I just had Kellie in my mind," said Ginny. "I'd seen the pictures of her and her kids and I just, the whole time, that's just kind of what I had in the back of my mind.
"I couldn't imagine it as a mother myself," said Ginny. "I would hope and pray that if I was ever put in a situation like this, that someone would have the courage to step up."
Thankfully, that's exactly what Ginny did. The very next day, she began working with authorities, and just one week after that initial message, Tara was on her way to meet with who she thought was a hit-man.
Crime Watch Daily sat down with Ginny to watch surveillance video from that meeting, and that now-infamous moment where Tara says exactly what she wants done with Kellie Cooke:
"Oh my God, just put her in a chopper, like, one of those lumberjack chopper things," Tara says on the recording.
"My heart just ached for their family," said Ginny. "I'm like picturing a movie of somebody throwing someone through a wood chopper. You don't joke about something like that."
And once the deal is done, there's no second-guessing, no moment of hesitation. Instead, Tara's reaction to believing the mother of her stepchildren is about to be murdered: "I'm gonna be so excited, I just can't even tell you, I'm so happy about this."
"She's just pure evil," said Ginny.
"OK. Very, very good," Tara says on the recording. "You the man. I really appreciate this."
Minutes later, Tara Lambert is arrested for conspiracy to commit murder.
The problem for Tara was that the person she had set up the hit was working with authorities.
Did Ginny feel disrespected that Tara would contact her about this?
"How dare you assume 'cause I'm from a trailer park that I don't have morals and that I don't value human life?" said Ginny. "It kind of fueled me to help with the cops with the situation."
Thanks to Ginny, cops bring Tara in just minutes after she orders the hit on Kellie Cooke.
"Am I really like arrested?" Tara asks a detective in an interrogation video. "Oh my God."
And that's when she learns she tried to manipulate the wrong person.
"Those phone calls that you talked to her about was recorded," the detective tells Tara in the interrogation video. "They are recorded, and it's you that wanted to have her killed.
"You did talk about having her killed, right?" the detective asks.
"I mean it came up but I don't want her dead. It came up, yes," Tara says in the video.
After more than an hour of police interrogation, Tara still tries to deny wanting Kellie dead. But what she already said was plenty.
In this Crime Watch Daily exclusive, Kellie and her husband Shawn talk about the moment they learned of the hit.
"When the cops showed up on my porch that day and told me, my exact words were I was not surprised,'" Kellie Cooke tells Crime Watch Daily.
"I was expecting more detail, to be honest, of what she wanted done," said Kellie. "So whenever I watched it I was kind of like 'Is there more to it?'"
"She's just shown us so much over the years," said Shawn.
"I guess I just didn't expect anything less. Does that make more sense?" said Kellie.
At trial, Tara's defense tries to turn the tables, claiming she was entrapped by the state of Ohio, and by Ginny herself.
"Absolutely not, I never trapped her into anything, and at one point I actually asked her 'Are you positive that this is something that you wanna do?' And that's when she said 'Oh yeah, I hate her, she makes my life miserable,'" said Ginny.
And jurors weren't buying it either. After a brief trial in which she claimed it was all just a big joke, Tara Lambert was found guilty of first-degree conspiracy to commit aggravated murder, and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
"Well, I mean I know they told us to be quiet, but the tears of joy," said Shawn.
"It was actually nice to hear," said Kellie.
Though they weren't allowed to have any contact during the trial, after Tara's sentencing, Ginny and the Cookes finally came face to face. And now, for the first time on television, all three sit down to talk about their new bond, forged by evil.
"When somebody saves your life, you feel like you owe them that, to give it back to them," said Shawn.
"I think since the day we met," said Kellie.
"We talk all the time," said Ginny.
"It's kind of like family. If it wasn't for her we wouldn't be here," said Kellie.
And as it turns out, we may not have even seen the worst of Tara's depravity.
"There is a whole lot to the other videos that they didn't even show on film that she says a lot, a lot, that would make your body cringe just hearing her say the things she says," said Ginny. "I wouldn't say it was worse than the wood chopper, but she was talking about cutting out her breast implants and gifting them to me."
How does it feel having worked with police to have potentially saved two lives?
"How do I feel? Just grateful. Grateful that they're family, that they're OK," said Ginny.
But in a sad postscript, Ginny's own life has taken a turn for the worse.
"I get a lot of 'Oh, you're a narc, you snitched her out, you set her up, you talked her into doing this,'" said Ginny. "I'm constantly looking over my shoulder and constantly making sure that no one's following me."
"She's done the right thing and then people's kind of pointing finger at her, like 'You shouldn't have done this,'" said Kellie. "If it wasn't for her our little boy wouldn't know us."
"It's the total opposite of what it should be," said Shawn Cooke. "We're getting all the praise and she's feeling the repercussions of being the good guy."
Set the record straight: Far from being a snitch, you want the world to see Ginny as a hero?
"Hero, absolutely," said Shawn.
"Absolutely and she doesn't like that title," said Kellie.
"But she is. She's always going to be our hero," said Shawn.
"I just did what any decent human being would have done," said Ginny.
At her sentencing, Tara Lambert insisted she is not a monster, and that if she had a time machine she would go back and this wouldn't have happened. Instead, the only time she will be doing is in prison for the next seven years, which is four years less than the maximum sentence.
